AURANGABAD: The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) has announced that its billing centres in Aurangabad circle would remain open on Maha Shivaratri and the coming Sunday.The power utility company has appealed to the customers to pay their dues to avoid disconnection of services. For the past few weeks, the MSEDCL has taken an aggressive stance towards recovery of dues and issued notices to defaulters."The billing centres across Aurangabad and Jalna districts will remain open during the two public holidays as a part of our ongoing recovery drive of dues towards power consumption," MSEDCL public relation officer Sunil Jadhav said.Besides billing centres, the consumers can pay their bills online (www.mahadiscom.in) and also through the mobile application.The MSEDCL recommends payment of bill online as it is beneficial for consumers. The mobile application has been emerging as another popular payment gateway with more than 10 lakh downloads, authorities said."So far, nine employees, including officers, have been suspended for showing negligence towards duties of bill recovery. Besides, 40 other officials and staffers have been slapped with show-cause notices for their inefficiency in recovery of dues," officials said."The non-recovery of dues for the past years has posed survival issues for the company as operations and management has taken a hit due to mismatch in expenditure and revenue generation. Therefore, the top brass has planned a slew of measures to recover dues," officials added.The focus of the ongoing recovery drive has been on Marathwada and western Maharashtra. "Recovery teams have been formed in these two regions at local levels to intensify the drive. Also, observers from regional headquarters have been appointed at local levels to oversee recovery," authorities said.Consumers who have not paid their bills for three months and have dues above Rs 1,000 have been on the radar of the MSEDCL during the ongoing drive.As on the first week of February, power connections of 2,349 consumers from Aurangabad and Jalna districts were disconnected temporarily for not paying dues worth Rs 4.15 crore. Power supply of another 259 consumers was cut permanently for not paying bills amounting to Rs 61.95 lakh.

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